


An Emergency Call

by warbreaker



Category: The Evil Within (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, canon novelization
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-15
Updated: 2015-10-15
Packaged: 2018-04-26 13:29:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5006530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warbreaker/pseuds/warbreaker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In honor of The Evil Within's (belated) first birthday -- a novelization of the first five minutes of the game.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Emergency Call

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday to this wonderful game. It feels like it just came out last month, and yet at the same time it feels like it's been five years, because I'm so damn starved for any news of a sequel.

_All units, all units; 11-99, expedite cover code 3. Beacon Mental Hospital._

Most chatter that came through the scanner only registered as background noise to Sebastian anymore – especially on days like today, when the clock was closing in on 1700 and even his more important thoughts were drowned out by the dull roar of the cruiser's engine and the pattering of rain on the windows. Water splashed beneath the tires and up along the passenger's side door as the vehicle took a sharp left turn, making the roads sound more dangerous than they actually were. Just beyond the window, the concrete world was gray and forgettable as it passed by; so many of these roads looked the same in the poor weather, and the city seemed empty without pedestrians lining the streets to go about their day.

"184 copy; code 3. ETA 3 minutes."

_Copy 184._

The sirens kicked on, and that, at least, caught Sebastian's attention. It'd been a long, long while since anyone on his team actually responded to the dull rabble that came from dispatch – and longer still since they'd done so without consulting the others first. As a detective, Sebastian didn't respond to calls anymore. He hadn't been the first on scene since his days as a beat cop, and he only showed up at all if he happened to be out and about and in the vicinity of something that might have required immediate backup.

"Sorry detectives," Connelly said, glancing into the back seat through the rearview. "I know you just comin' off a case, but I'm afraid we're gonna have to make a detour."

"Sounds serious," Joseph's voice came from behind. "Is it a riot?"

"Call went out just before I picked you up," Connelly explained. "Said it was 'multiple homicides.' Half a dozen units already on scene."

Sebastian furrowed his brow as the slightest shade of frustration and confusion washed over him. He glanced over at the man in the driver's seat, wondering why the hell it'd taken him so long to mention something as serious as this. Connelly was an EMS officer by trade; it was only by the luck of the draw that he'd spent the last few months acting as more or less a chauffeur with a badge.

_131, please advise..._

"Hey, maybe it's the ghost of that doctor who went schizo and chopped up all those patients," he joked.

"That's not what happened," Joseph said. "Some patients disappeared. Some kind of scandal?"

"Still," Connelly pressed, "gives ya the creeps, doesn't it?"

_127, 124, please respond..._

This was unproductive. While Sebastian was a sucker for a good horror story as much as anyone else, it wasn't really appropriate to be thinking of cases like that as a homicide detective. Besides, he was already on edge from the visit and questioning of the flighty and unstable witness they'd just dealt with, and if they were going to be walking into a mass murder scene, all them had to have their heads in the right place. He twisted in his seat to look back at his partner.

"Joseph," he said. "You think there's a connection?"

"It's a possibility," he replied. "I believe the records were sealed."

_Anyone on scene, respond._

No one did, and that was never good news. Sebastian turned back around to glance ahead out the windshield, and when the silence continued, he grabbed hold of the radio himself.

"Dispatch, this is Detective Castellanos in 184," he announced. "What's the situation, over?"

_184, be advised. Some problem... at Beacon Memorial... radio..._

Half of the message was swallowed up by white noise and static – no doubt, the storm was to blame for the interference. That was to be expected after budget cuts to the KCPD prevented the precinct from upgrading any of their equipment from the same old bullshit they'd been using since Sebastian joined the force nearly twenty years ago. He scowled and pressed on; there was likely no use in asking dispatch to repeat.

"Is there any –"

The question hadn't even been fully formed in his head before the interference cut through him like a thousand needles getting pincushioned into his brain all at once.

"Goddamn it!"

"Jesus!"

Sebastian didn't even notice the car lurch and cut to the side as both he and Connelly reeled from the deafening noise. It was like a microphone being held up to the speaker of an amplifier, except it was piercing and seemed almost deadly by comparison. All of his organs felt like they were failing, and it was almost like someone had taken a buzz saw to his brain and was splitting it open right down between the two hemispheres.

And then it was gone.

The radio was reduced to quiet scrambles, and the voice coming from dispatch was gone. Sebastian took a deep breath, wondering how much of the sound from the speakers was really just his ears ringing, and he heard Joseph do the same. Silence filled the space between every officer packed inside this cruiser, and a creeping feeling of unease worked its way under Sebastian's skin. Swallowing hard, he looked up to find the city even emptier than before, and only the spotlight from the tower at Beacon Hospital seemed to notice.

He gave up fighting with the outdated communication system at his disposal and returned the radio back to its place. Dispatch wasn't able to get a hold of any of the units on scene at the murder, and judging from the way contact had been cut off so suddenly, there was likely some sort of jam in place to prevent the police from calling for backup. Maybe Joseph's initial assumption had been right. If a riot had broken out at the hospital, it probably wouldn't have been hard at all for the patients to rig up some kind of system to send out a disruptive signal – especially if they were broadcasting it from the highest point in the building.

When Sebastian glanced into the rearview mirror from his position in the passenger's seat, though, he saw that his partner was still recovering from the ordeal. Joseph had pulled his glasses off and was shaking his head as though to get it screwed back on the right way. To his left, though, their assigned rookie seemed suspiciously unfazed. Kidman simply looked out her window as though this was just any other car trip and she just needed to find anything beyond these walls to focus on.

"Junior Detective Kidman," Sebastian said, breaking the silence. "Any thoughts?"

"Nothing yet," she replied in that eerily placid way she always did. "I'm sure we'll know everything once we get there."

It was a decent enough answer, but not so much as to put his mind at ease. On the one hand, Sebastian was halfway to the point of proud that she'd learned not to gun-jump with her thoughts and go into a case with preconceived assumptions. On the other, this would be the first time Kidman ever came with them to an active crime scene. As far as Sebastian knew, she hadn't been an officer before her recruitment as a detective. The fact that she didn't seem nervous or even excited about facing a killer or killers who'd already racked up a body count just felt off to him – but, then again, so did damn near everything the rookie did.

The entrance to Beacon Mental Hospital was imposing but not entirely unfriendly. Its driveway was blocked off by an elegant steel-barred gate, and the fence that surrounded the perimeter was hidden behind green, well-kept hedges. Just like everywhere else in the city, the building appeared to be completely abandoned. The only signs of life were hollow ones; the tower's spotlight scanned the outside like the guiding beam from a lighthouse, and its cold yellow glow was offset by the blue and red flashing lights of half a dozen abandoned police cruisers in the parking lot.

Squad car 184 came to a stop as soon as it reached the hospital's gates. Sebastian and Connelly stepped out to get a better look, and each of them opened the doors behind them in order to give Joseph and Kidman the same opportunity. There were no sounds of struggle that could be heard above the pouring rain. No signs of movement. The left gate was slightly ajar, and yet it didn't appear as though anyone had tried to leave.

"What do you make of it?" Joseph asked.

 _Nothing good,_ Sebastian answered him silently. Maybe it was worth giving the radio one last try. Now that they were on the scene, they couldn't leave, but they also couldn't go in without anyone knowing their whereabouts.

"Connelly, contact dispatch and let them know what's happening," he said. "Joseph, Kidman. You're with me. We're going to have a look around."

"Right," Kidman responded.

As they headed through the gate, it was easier to see that an attempt was made by the first responders to close off the scene. There were traffic cones and control barriers pulled into the roundabout driveway, some wrapped in police tape, but none of them had been set up in any sort of meaningful or effective way. Joseph trotted up ahead to get a better look, roaming from cruiser to cruiser for any hint of what the situation inside the hospital might have been. Scattered among the marked cars were a pair of ambulances and a civilian vehicle, but just at a glance, the scene appeared eerily abandoned.

"There are no weapons left in their cars," Joseph called back.

Sebastian picked up his pace to join his partner at the left side of the roundabout, and Kidman split off to head right. As he followed Joseph's route, he noticed that some of the cars still had their trunks and doors open, even in spite of the rain. It was coming down so hard that it was starting to soak through Sebastian's trench coat at the shoulders - what could have been so urgent that the officers all snatched up their weapons and didn't feel that they had time to close their doors?

"No blood or shell casings out here..." Joseph commented, as though reading his mind.

Not for the first time, a sinking feeling of wrongness settled in the pit of Sebastian's stomach. He looked up at the building proper, searching for an answer, but nothing seemed out of place. Beacon was at the same time beautiful and ominous – a four story stone fortress modeled after a gothic-style cathedral, sporting an east and a west wing and topped off with a spire atop its main hall where the spotlight found its home. It was supposed to resemble the fortitude and protection offered by medieval castles, but stuck in the middle of the modern-looking architecture that made up the rest of Krimson City, it looked more like an ominous warning than a place of sanctuary.

Sebastian left Joseph to his preliminary inspection and headed for the entrance. The stone stairs leading to the front of the building were as clean and clear of combat and struggle as the driveway had been, and the heavy wooden doors showed no signs of having to be battered open. Someone must have let all of the officers in willingly. A trap or an ambush could very well be waiting on the other side, but Sebastian tried the door anyway just to check if it'd been locked at any point between then and now.

It hadn't. The door gave way easily at the smallest push, and the smell that came from inside was so strong that he immediately found himself coughing and gagging. The stale air was like a punch to the face, wrapped in the sour stench of death and rotting meat. It lodged itself at the back of Sebastian's throat and reached down inside of him to tug at his stomach – and it was the shock of it more than anything else that set off the physical reaction in him. This sure as hell wouldn't be his first dance with fresh bodies at a murder scene, but the sheer power of it was overwhelming. "Multiple homicides" might have been the understatement of the century. This wasn't just two or three victims caught up in the whirlwind of a patient riot. There had to have been a massacre inside.

"Smells like blood," Joseph said as he headed up the stairs.

In a normal crime scene, he shouldn't have been able to smell it from that far away, especially with the rain to mask it. His partner had his weapon in hand as he came up to the other side of the door, and Sebastian gave him a single nod in affirmation.

"All right, stay sharp," he said.

Joseph nodded back at him, and together they pushed open the double doors leading into Beacon Mental Hospital. Immediately, bodies and blood came into view. A few patients and visitors were laid out on the white linoleum floor of the waiting room, some seeming to have been dragged to their final resting spots. Wet streaks of blood, dark and stagnant, formed tiny trails that led to their goal – though, others seemed to go nowhere at all. Joseph stepped forward into the lobby, weapon at the ready, and Sebastian glanced back at his rookie.

"We're going to check it out," he told her. "Don't let anyone else through this door."

Kidman gave him a disapproving glare, also holding her sidearm in hand.

"I can be an extra set of eyes," she protested.

"We don't know what's happening here," he said. "You're our backup."

She drew her eyebrows together in frustration and looked like she was about to argue the point further, but Sebastian closed the matter for discussion. He headed inside without another word, and the door slowly swung shut behind him.

The scene was even more horrific up close. It wasn't just patients and visitors lying dead here – there were staff scattered among the bodies, too. Nurses and aides were face-down on the floor, and others were slumped over on benches. Without being able to inspect them all properly, it was difficult to discern what, exactly, the cause of death was. The sheer amount of blood would suggest serious stab wounds, but there was a lack of offal to confirm that theory. Likewise, the splatters on the walls and ceiling presented the possibility that there was a shooting, but there were no shell casings or bullet holes in the surroundings.

The most unsettling part about it, though, was the silence. There were no distant or muffled voices, no hints that a struggle was still taking place further within. The only thing that could be heard over the detectives' careful footsteps was the ticking of the clock on the far wall.

Joseph took point here, leading the way with his gun at the ready. Sebastian kept his weapon holstered for now; with the sheer amount of blood coating the floor, it was all he could do to just keep his feet as he walked. The last thing he needed was to slip and fall with a firearm in his hand.

A small clamor of hollow metal sounded in the distance.

"Did you hear something?" Joseph asked.

Sebastian nodded, trying to listen for any sort of a follow-up, but nothing came. His partner simply nodded back at him before heading over in the direction of the noise – and Sebastian was surprised to see Joseph's walk turn into a trot as he cut left and disappeared into a room beside the empty front desk.

"Someone alive in here..." his partner called to him.

Joseph stuck his head out through the doorway and signaled Sebastian that it was clear for him to join, and so he picked up his pace as he headed in his partner's direction. The room that they'd found seemed to be some sort of a security office – the far wall was covered with at least twenty monitors connected to a CCTV system. Surely enough, slumped up against the wall in the corner, someone was in fact alive. A doctor, no less, middle-aged and balding, staring ahead with wild eyes and a blank expression. Sebastian immediately took a knee beside him and placed a hand on his shoulder, trying to rouse the doctor's focus and attention.

"Are you injured?" he asked. "What happened here?"

The doctor didn't answer at first. His eyes darted back and forth between Sebastian and Joseph, as though trying to make sense of what he was seeing. Sebastian took a breath and waited with growing impatience. He knew that it was often hard for a witness to compartmentalize what had just happened to and around them, but this wasn't just any other murder. The killer or killers were still waiting somewhere in these halls, and the longer they all sat here, the more vulnerable they were.

"Can't be real..." the doctor said finally, sounding dazed. "Impossible... Ruvik is..."

His resolve seemed to give out after that; his eyes closed and he dropped his chin to his chest, looking utterly defeated. Feeling frustrated, Sebastian leaned forward a little bit more and opened his mouth to press the issue, but Joseph beat him to the punch. His partner dropped to a crouch beside him and grabbed the doctor by his other shoulder, holding him steady and in place.

"I've got him," Joseph said. "The security cameras might tell us something."

At the very least, they'd probably be able to tell him a lot more than this witness was capable of at the moment. Sebastian rose to his feet and headed over to the security console, giving the monitor setup a once-over. Several of the screens were dark and inoperable, and others were lost to snowy static. The few that did cling to life showed nothing helpful – no signs of anyone in the halls at all, neither living nor dead. Where the hell was everyone...?

Gunshots rang out in the distance.

Sebastian glanced over his shoulder reflexively, then turned his attention back towards the cameras. He scanned the screens that were mounted up on the wall, but still nothing moved. There were three on the console itself. Two were black, and the other...

Someone darted into view there. Then another. And a third. Sebastian placed both hands on the desk and leaned forward, trying to make out what was happening through the low resolution and dodgy frame rate. The longer he focused, the more he was able to make out. Those three men were all uniformed officers, and all three had their weapons drawn. From where Sebastian was standing, it was impossible to make out where in the building that hallway was, but he made a mental note of the checkered floor and the high, elaborate windows. There were more gunshots, and the muzzle flashes from the officers' weapons complemented each one.

A fourth figure came into view. This one wasn't in uniform, but it was hard to determine any details beyond that. It stopped in front of the foremost officer, raised a hand, and the officer fell. Things were happening too quickly and the picture was too poor for Sebastian to see what the hell had just transpired, and before his brain could even attempt to make sense of it, the figure was on the move again. It stopped in front of the second officer, then the third, all without having to take a single step. A spray of blood shot from the officers' neck areas as they both fell without a fight. Was the feed laggy, or was this thing really moving _that_ fast?

"What the hell?" Sebastian murmured.

Closer to the camera now, he could see that the unknown figure was a man in a white hood. He stood and watched his work play out, waiting for each of his targets to drop flat and stop moving before he finally turned and looked in Sebastian's direction.

Then he was gone, disappearing like a glitch in a computer system. The only detail that Sebastian was able to work out about him was the third-degree burn he sported on half of his face and neck. No matter how long he stared at the monitor, though, the man did not reappear.

"What...?" he asked himself softly.

 _Behind me,_ he noticed a half-second too late.

Sebastian felt the man's presence before he heard him move, and he turned just in time to see the man in white raise something sharp pointed at his direction.

The world went black.

**Author's Note:**

> I was originally going to do the entire first chapter, but then I saw how long it was getting just from the first five minutes, so I cut it there. Unfortunately, I have other things I need to be writing, and I can't spend 20,000 words doing the full 30 minutes that comprise this chapter. :c If I ever decided to novelize the entire game, though, I'm not sure that I would start it here. I would probably start it with Kidman and Mobius instead. Just a thought I had...
> 
> Thanks for reading!!


End file.
